Fatal Error
by Jay Gee Three
Summary: BladeRunner6; the novelisation, The book of the film of the book - Deep, booming thunder rolled over the city from the shores across the bay. His eyes drooped. 'I've seen vast clouds of ice shards glittering in the d-d-d-dark, lit only be the reflected light off Io. All these m-mo... mo-ents,' he slurred, 'will b-b-be forever... lost... to time, and memory, unknown... who will re


This is intended as a novelisation of the film, however, I have altered most of the exact dialogue, to keep it within the intended meaning in the film, but, because of the usual copyright issues, sufficiently different from the exact wording of the film. Some other plot events have been added, and others have been subtracted or otherwise altered.

Fatal Error; or, Let Us Sit Upon The Roof And Talk Of Life Expired Replicants...

The Replicant, unknown to his self; Living?

Forfeits, through Life Expiry, both life and death,

And goes back to the vile beginings from whence it sprang

Unwept, unknown, forgotton

\- Doctor Eldon Tyrell (after Sir Walter Scott)

XVII

Deckard switched lights off in the room. He wanted Roy to be in light, but he needed to be in shadow. Then he arranged the laughing policeman and the chuckling Buddha in front of himself as cover. He took up a position amongst the automata. He hunkered down behind an exaggeratedly over-stuffed easy chair. He checked and readied the LzrLite. He switched it to mute and watched the LED's light up to the 100% charge. He felt a bit foolish when he remembered he had his Razr hand-gun too, he took it out and checked it.

He heard the clash of the safety guard close on the elevator down in the lobby, and the laboured mechanism of the elevator rising to the fifth floor.

He waited.

He heard the low-power engines of an advertising blimp approach overhead. Then it started to boom out its advertorial messages about life on the New America Saturn X Moon Bases - offering hard work, but fun! - and about the hot, hot kick that Carolina Moonshiners gives you - distilled by _real_ moonshiners, so they claimed, with added _real_ chillis.

Deckard could see clearly across to the front door. He had left the door partly-open, just as he had found it. A figure appeared. Roy was, helpfully, caught and silhouetted for a few moments by the rotating lights from the advertising blimp as it passed by overhead. The figure stopped. Deckard could see it looking in the door, but it didn't move. He needed a good view of him, he needed him to step into the foyer. He heard marching feet again somewhere in the apartment. Roy seemed to be scanning what he could see of the apartment from the doorway. He was being very careful. Deckard could see that Roy seemed to be looking at the room Decker was in, then down to the floor where Pris lay, and back again.

Those marching figures were marching about somewhere close by but Deckard didn't dare even glance from where Roy was standing. In an instant Roy darted into the foyer to squat by Pris's corpse. Deckard squeezed the trigger, just as Kaiser Bill and Ready-Eddie Teddy marched out together from the dining-room.

'Home again, home again. Is that you Priscilla?' they said in unison as Deckard's shot blasted into Ready-Eddie Teddy. His soft foam stuffing and cabling exploded around the foyer. Deckard lost sight of Roy for a few moments as the shower of styroform foam-filler floated down. He rushed out from his cover to shoot Roy while he was in the foyer, before he could make his way out of the apartment. He laid down some rapid fire and ran toward the door and slammed his shoulder into it. He reached up to bolt the door, gun still held ready. There was no one in the foyer except himself, Kaiser Bill and the remains of Ready Eddie Teddy.

Then, with Deckard still leaning against the door, it slammed open, tearing out the dead-bolt, as the full weight of Roy B hit it from outside. Deckard's head ping-ponged as it hit the back wall and then the back of the door.

'I've been told that you're a marksman, I've seen your work, so how come you missed me?' Roy hissed.

Deckard was trapped in the space behind the door. Roy slammed the tall heavy door against him again, and again, and again. Deckard's head was being ping-ponged between the wall and the back of the door, slammed about so much he couldn't hold himself steady enough to get a shot off.

'That is for Zhora,' Roy said, then he slammed Deckard between the back of the door and the wall again, 'That is for Leon,' he said. And again, twice more. 'And this is for Priscilla,' Roy slammed him again and again. Over and over again. 'Especially for P-P-P-Priscilla,' Roy said.

The remaining Replicant then reached behind the door and grabbed the LzrLite out of his hand and chucked it away. Then he grabbed Deckard by the wrist, with a sharp yank he hauled him out from behind the door and slung him across the foyer. Deckard crashed to the floor and Roy was on him in an instant, punching him directly in the face. Deckard felt the bone and cartilage in his nose give way beneath the blow. Possibly his cheekbone cracked too with the force, he thought, as his mind swam. Roy slapped him across the face and held his head in his grip, he locked his eyes on Deckard. He nodded in the direction of Priscilla, 'Pleased with your work? You are a miserable murdering cretin,' Roy hissed with contempt - Deckard had never heard a Rep refer to their retirement as _murder_ before; another innovation I could do without, he thought.

Roy got hold of Deckard's hand and started to bend it back. Deckard watched it being bent. His hand got to forty-five degrees to the forearm. 'That doesn't hurt,' Deckard said and immediately regretted saying anything, it was the kind of bravado that invites pain, and he got it.

'I know,' Roy said. 'But this does.' He seemed to use all his power against Deckard's hand, bending it so far back in one skilled movement until the bone dislocated from the forearm at the wrist. Deckard let out a long excruciating cry of animal pain. Then Roy got a firm hold of Deckard's forearm and twisted it one way while twisting the entire hand the other way.

Deckard howled out again.

'Let me see how good you really are. Let me see how much you like to be hunted, then maybe I'll see some kind of _empathic response_ for what we are put through by you blade runners. I'll even let you have a head start. I'll count to ten. Run! And, because _I'm_ a good sport, I'll make it a slow count,' Roy said.

Deckard collapsed to the floor. He was close to fainting yet again. He was back to feeling like a punch-drunk boxer at an old travelling carnival. He struggled to get onto all fours. Roy stood over him, he placed the sole of his boot against Deckard's rear and shoved him so that he fell flat again.

'Get up, get up!' he chivvied, 'Or you'll never get away.'

Deckard started to struggle up onto all fours again.

'One', said Roy. Deckard couldn't get out of the apartment through the front door, he couldn't get past the looming figure of Roy. But then, he could hardly get to his feet.

'Let me help you,' Roy said. He stooped and took hold of Deckard's smashed-up wrist and hauled him to his feet. Deckard cried out at the sharpness of the pain. Nausea swept over him. He had no bearings, he part-staggered and part-stumbled into another room. Away from Roy, away from the rooms full of JF's automata. The room he staggered into was filled with styroform blocks, he saw a rough hole gouged out low down in the wall. He bolted for it. To him, it felt like he was scrabbling down a rabbit hole, like Alice in Lewis Carroll's tale. He reached through and rested his weight on one elbow and clambered through the gap. He was in the next apartment in the block; he staggered along the room.

'Two,' he heard behind him.

He felt nausea rising from some place deep within himself. In his state of pain, he was not certain why that number was of some significance, but he knew it was. He nearly lost his balance and spun around, disorientating himself. He was in a room with a collapsed ceiling. A blast of rain hit him and it revived him just enough for him to come to and realise where he was. He knew he was in a room in the apartment block that ... he couldn't remember the man's name, he knew he was a genetic designer... but it was where he lived.

All he could think of was that he had to get out of this building. He heard the number three called out.

Meanwhile, Roy had crouched down by the body of Pris. He lifted her head and nuzzled his face against her's. Her white pan-stick rubbed off on his skin. Then he laid her head down again, tenderly, as a lover does, and he lay beside her. He took hold of her left-arm and held it over his face, letting her fingertips brush softly against his skin. Tears sprang to his eyes but he didn't weep.

'Pris. I should have stayed, though you told me to go. I wanted, so much, that we could be together, when we expired. And now I know there is no possibility of an Extension. That was a fantasy.' He moaned low and long. Then he suddenly started up. 'Tyrell! Why did you make me? To feel pain? Only to feel pain. Is that all? Is that why?!' he bellowed. Bellowed out, to no one. To himself? To the smashed and mutilated remains of Tyrell himself? To the rain flayed night?

In a moment, he subsided.

'Four,' he said quietly. He gave another low moan and nestled his body close by Priscilla's. He tucked one arm under her body and the other over her and clutched her still-warm body close to him.

'Fffffffive,' his voice slurring, he called out to wherever Deckard was.

'They never leave us alone,' he said quietly, speaking to Priscilla as though she were still alive. He leaned over her and kissed her life-warm lips. He sensed his vision blurring. He touched her lips with his fingertips.

He turned away from her and let out a loud wolf cry. Roy felt a numbness across the back of his head.

'Six,' he shouted. 'If you want to live you had better run. It always makes the hunt more fun.'

As Roy had lain next to the body of Priscilla, there was only one thought repeating over and over in Deckard's mind, I've got to get out of this building. I can still live, if I can get out. His mind was befuddled by the battering he had taken from Roy and fuddled by fear.

The ceiling had fallen down in one long section across the width of the old dining-room in this other apartment. Deckard clambered up the fallen-in rafters that lay strewn about. It was like climbing a giant's ladder, and the wood of the rafters was slick from the constant rainfall over the months or years that they had lain like this. He was halfway up to the roof space when, trying to hook his broken gun hand onto the next rafter, he slipped and fell to the floor again. He landed on his broken, twisted wrist. He cried out from the shot of pain along the length of his arm, it was answered with another wolf-cry deep in the building. But, now, Roy did not exist for Deckard. Only fear. And the need to get away. He started up again. Climbing until he managed to haul his upper body up into the roof space. He heard slow footsteps below. He struggled to get his legs into the roof space. He hooked one knee up and desperately tried to drag his other leg up too.

Roy B's left-hand started to close up, to reflexively bunch into a fist. He sensed the numbness spreading along his arm. The hand was losing sensation. He beat it repeatedly against the wall. He picked up a length of solid wood to pound it against his hand, over and over. To try and feel - something.

'Seven. Get to hell, because you'll never get to Heaven,' he called out.

Deckard heard Roy walk through the room below.

\- 'Eight,' he shouted. 'Your time is nearly up...' Deckard felt weak. He stood and tried to summon up his reserves of strength.

\- 'Nine. Get ready to die,' Roy called out, then sensed his own rapidly advancing breathlessness. Waited and waited until he caught his breath again, then he shouted, 'Ten!' His voice bellowed out triumphantly. 'Come out, come out. You _ugly_ little man,' he shouted. His voice echoed, not just through the apartment, but the entire empty building.

Deckard watched him walk by beneath him. He slumped down onto his back and lay. Just a few seconds of rest, of respite, he thought. He dragged at the Dexatrel dispenser in his pocket, rested it on his chest and squeezed it. A little pale yellow pill dropped onto his shirt-front, he blindly felt for it and picked it up. He raised his hand - he tried to control it's shaking - to put it into his mouth - and dropped the pill somewhere on the floor, somewhere out of his sight. He looked around but his eyes couldn't focus enough for him to find it. Instead of feeling around the floor for the lost pill, he put the dispenser up to his mouth and squeezed the button so that a pill dropped straight into his mouth. He crunched his teeth down on it. He needed the restorative effect quickly, he needed any strength it could give him.

Deckard rolled over and struggled to his feet. He could scarcely focus his eyes. He moved, mostly by instinct, not by thought or by reason, toward an oval of light shining at the edge of the attic space. His visual senses were working almost like a compound eye, attracted not by form but only by light. He stumbled toward that meagre light. When he got there he found it was an oriel window set in the roof.

Deckard heard Roy following him up into the roof space. He saw Roy's head appear in the hole in the ceiling he had come through. Roy immediately found the little yellow pill and put it in his mouth. Deckard had taken the Razr out of his shoulder holster and put all his strength into lifting his arm and holding it steady as he aimed. Then he fired. Nothing happened. He squeezed the trigger button a second time. Nothing happened. He checked the gun as best he could in the dim light. By feel more than sight, he realised the battery pack was missing. Being so punch-drunk, he couldn't think how that had happened. He hoped he hadn't released it himself, in his confused state. Deckard loosened off a piece of pipe-work. As Roy turned his head away as he looked about in the dark attic, Deckard rushed at him. He swung at his head with all the might he could gather with a one-handed grip, striking solidly as Roy turned his head to face him. Rather than howl with pain Roy laughed. He mimicked the laugh of JF Sebastien's laughing policeman.

'Now, that's what I like to see! Show some fighting spirit. Don't give up now.' A large split had opened up on Roy's forehead and blood flowed into his eyes. He lost his grip and fell backwards into the room below. Deckard heard his voice, 'You could've really hurt me. But I don't hurt so easily.'

Deckard turned to head for the oriel window. He half climbed and half fell out. He grabbed out at the frame to prevent himself falling off the broad ledge over the eaves. He started to clamber up the exposed tile supports to get to the flat roof.

Now what? Where to go? Get the SFPD heli-craft to spot him? He looked around the night sky, the rain getting into his eyes, as he tried to see it's lights. He couldn't spot it anywhere. Maybe he could get across onto another rooftop, and away? Anywhere. To get away from the pursuing Rep.

Just as he reached the top of the pitched roof, and clambered up onto it's broad flat surface, Roy's bloodied head appeared through a roof-hatch.

'There's no way off this roof. Only over the sides,' Roy said.

Thunder crackled across the bay.

Deckard leant against a long redundant chimney stack, he summoned the last resources of his strength, and whatever courage he had left too. He knew he was going to die. His options had narrowed to these; Roy was in front of him, and he wouldnt be able to get past him, there was a sheer drop on all four sides. And an SFPD heli-craft that could come in to help but which he could not see or hear anywhere which wasn't responding to his call. Had they been called away to another job - so much for the new, improved, better, entirely freelancing self-financing police force - and he was so distracted that he hadn't heard their call? It hardly mattered now.

He stumbled at the edge and fell off the flat roof and tumbled back onto the ledge above the guttering. He lay helpless - like a tortoise on its back baking on a desert floor in the scenario of the V-K Test that he had administered so many times. Beyond a desire to live, which was failing, all he felt was pain. He passed out.

When he came to, Roy's face was by the edge of the roof, looking down at him.

'That's dangerous. Lying around there. Be careful, won't you' Roy said, 'I don't want anything bad to happen to you by accident. I want to _kill_ you.'

'Don't leave me here...' Deckard pleaded. 'Kill me, be quick. But don't let me fall.' Deckard hadn't given up on life but he had given up pleading for his life with these Replicants. The only option available to him now was the way that he died.

'It's an experience to have to live in fear, don't you think? Well, isn't it? This is the life we have lived, it is the indentured life of a slave.' - which _you_ would never have known you were experiencing if this mysterious thing, which we call, consciousness hadn't dawned in your artificial brains, thought Deckard - 'Even an assassin-slave is still just a slave. That is the life we have lived,' Roy B said. It was without malice, just stated as a bald fact, as something a blade runner wouldn't know, or care about.

Deckard lay helplessly on the broad eves and he tried to move, to get up off his back. He half turned and gripped on to the guttering with his left hand, he pushed against it to test its strength. To test it could hold his weight as he shifted himself around. As he did so he lost his grip on the slippery surface. He tumbled over the edge and fell.

But.

Only for a moment.

In one swift move, a micro-second, Roy had leapt down onto the ledge above the broad eaves and grabbed at Deckard's flailing arm. Deckard felt nothing other than the pain that swept through him. But he realised he was not falling, but was suspended in air. His shattered flailing left arm, the source of all the pain that wracked him was clasped in the strong grip of the Replicant. But it's strength was rapidly diminishing and with the last power he had remaining he held Deckard suspended in mid-air.

'Don't play with me...!' Deckard shouted. 'Just let me go! Just let me fall!' he said despairingly, finally admitting his defeat.

Instead, he felt himself being lifted. Roy leaned back against the slope of the roof, counter-balancing Deckard's weight, and lifted him upward in a single smooth movement and dumped him back onto the ledge.

It was only five floors up. Hardly dangerous at all.

Roy leant him against the frame of a communication's dish and crouched down next to him. Deckard looked at him. He realised that Roy was now in the same condition as Pris had just been in. He was deteriorating rapidly toward his own Life Expiry in front of Deckard's eyes.

Deckard hauled himself up against the support frame of the comm's dish and lay resting and looked at Roy as closely as the rain and his own blurring vision would allow. The rain had drenched the Rep, his bloodied face was made bloodier as it was washed in rivulets from the cut above his eye and from his nose, and streamed off his chin.

'Tyrell's dead. Our tormentor. That's what I came for. We all did. You see, the team worked... this assassination squad worked. But there is no Life Extension. It was a fantasy. All our efforts ended in _his_ assassination... at least, at last. We had to die to succeed, but we succeeded. It was worth it. But to live, you must die too,' he said, repeating what Tyrell had said to him. He paused. 'Now I know,' he was now talking abstractly, to someone, somewhere in his own mind. 'Priscilla', he added as though directly addressing her, 'You beautiful, delicious, depraved doll. There is no need for more life... no more need for this... pain.' He smiled, but one side of his face suddenly sagged as though he were smiling on one side of his face, and frowning angrily on the other side. Then it righted itself and his eyeballs flicked momentarily upwards at the thick dense oily clouds, then he looked back down at Deckard, fixing his gaze on his eyes, just as Pris had before, as she was expiring.

'There are such sights that _I've_ seen...' his voice faltered, 'wonders that are beyond belief; there is so much I could tell you, but blade runners - no one - wants to know what a Replicant has seen, has ever _felt_ \- I've been where no _human_ could g-g-g-go, and sss-s-ss-survive.' His words began to slur. 'I've been so close to the sun I've felt my flesh blistering within my insulated suit, even behind deep solar shields, and been so far out to the edge of the system that even Saturn seemed small. I've... seen... the sorts of things that _you_ wouldn't believe, couldn't comprehend. I was there when we attempted to collapse Saturn into a new star, to bring light to the Outer-System. I've seen attack destroyers blazing in Jupiter's orbit. Falling in crazy, spiralling arcs before burning up in bright flame in the atmosphere. "As the forsaken angel, fiery Lucifer, abandoned, damned and desolate, once fell into the incandescent fire-oceans of Hell, as a whirlwind of liquid lightning, his wings did fume with gross flames." So, I too, must fall... must... die.'

Deep, booming thunder rolled over the city from the shores across the bay. He looked down again, within himself, his eyes drooped. 'I've _seen_ vast clouds of ice shards glittering in the d-d-d-dark, lit only be the reflected light off Io...' His voice was stuttering and faltering, 'All these mmmm-mo... mmmo-ents,' he slurred, 'will b-b-be forever... lost... to time, and memory, unknown, forgotten, and unsung... to become as inconsequential as... tears... in... rain.'

Roy tried to raise himself to his feet but he couldn't, his body was chasing the last of his reserves of strength, of power, to the ends of his limbs, to his extremities, he sensed that his head, battered as it was, felt pain no longer, it was entirely numb. He opened his mouth to speak again, but he did not speak. His mouth clearly moved as though he were speaking but there was no sound. His face shifted to blankness, then it jerked around into a quizzical expression that passed across his face for moments. His voice came back to him at last, in a final, fluid dash of words.

'Who will weep for me?' he seemed to ask of no one. He did not look at Deckard. Then he added, 'It's called Life Expired, I know that now. There is no escape, no _escapees_ from this.' His eyelids slowly closed, then they snapped open. He looked around. At Deckard first, then at the the pale mauve, the bold hot reds and oranges, and the cool glowing blues, of the xenon and neon on the rooftop signs all around. He turned his head slightly and looked up at the sky, ripening with the dirty orange glow of daybreak. He fixed his eyes on the sight of the dawn. A bright white light swept over them from a passing heli-craft.

He sighed.

'Priscilla,' he said quietly as though talking directly to her. 'I d-dddd-don't need any more... time... to live.' He smiled that strange, sad smile Deckard had seen in Pris and in Rachel when she came to his apartment. His eyes drooped, almost closed. They opened again, and this time he fixed them on Deckard. He said, 'To every season... there... is... a... pur-pose...' His voice let out each word slowly and quietly, as though he had no further energy remaining to speak. 'There is a time to... live... and... a...' He simply added three more small words, 'time... to die.'

His eyes slid away from Deckard over toward the light of dawn as his eyes closed finally, and his head bowed forward until his chin rested on his chest. The rain-diluted blood flowed off his face and dripped in a small, steady stream onto his body until the failed heart-beat no longer pumped the blood to his open wounds. Deckard continued to look at him until the rain ran clear and bloodless as it ran off his chin. The sound of thunder rolled toward the city from the lightning storm in the hills across the bay.

Deckard looked at him long after ward as he lay on the edge of the roof of the abandoned building, with only the life expired Replicant for company. In the drear dawn. In the insistent rain. Battered. Bleeding. Busted. And unable to move, and racked with pain - despite the pain-killers.

Sometime later - Deckard didn't know how long he was there - a heli-car swept over them, its bright, white beam blasting the roof with bleaching light. It gave a short blast on its siren and manoeuvred to land on the flat of the roof.

Deckard remained sitting, ignoring, or not noticing, the heavy rain any more. He felt battered and numbed, not just by Pris and Roy, but by Life, by the war, by living in a post-war peace in a devastated world, by Bryant, by his blade running service which he seemed never to get away from; by Existing. Being. From down on the ledge of the roof he saw the rotating lights on the heli-car above him brightly flashing in the early gloom.

Another grim morning of another grim day, he thought. Deckard used his one good hand to feel gingerly around his face, his jaw, his cheek and the cartilage of his nose. Then he felt around the back of his head. The encounter with Roy B, at the apartment door, had opened the cut he got from Priscilla wider still and he touched, carefully, around the opening and at the swelling.

The stooped figure of Jose Gaff appeared over him, at the edge of the roof, leaning on his cane. He looked somehow more stooped than before, somehow older, more pock-marked. Uglier. Everything gets uglier and older, thought Deckard. Gaff leaned forward on his cane and looked down at Deckard. Looked down at his semi-shattered body, at his broken arm, at his cuts, and contusions, his bruises, and grazes and lacerations. And then looked again at his broken arm, his gun-hand twisted around, laying in his lap at a mad angle. The marks of this last battle.

'Bryant wants to know. The assignments complete, right?' Gaff called down to him, over the sound of the rain, and the slowing whir of the rotors on the heli-car.

Deckard said. 'You can tell Bryant that I'm done. Finished. Finito.'

'I can see that,' said Gaff.

The night-rains started to slacken. Gaff stood still, continuing to look down at him, watching as he slowly opened and closed his eyes. Deckard realised that Gaff was looking down at him looking back up at him, holding his gaze. Just as he had done when he looked down at Pris as she had gazed up at him, and lain quietly, and undramatically expiring; he wondered if she would have died as quietly as Roy just had if her sight had not snapped to full environment awareness, and he had not shot her in a panic. Did Roy, at the last, after his extreme experiences, learn something of the value of - not just human life, but of - Life, in the most general way; just as he was losing his.

'Now you know what happens when you meet the latest NeXus series,' Gaff said. He lightly tapped his cane against his leg and then shifted his weight. He lifted his cane and touched the brim of his hat and turned. Deckard heard him as he slowly paced away with his shuffling limp. Suddenly Gaff loomed over him again at the edge of the roof.

'She can't live, y'know,' he said. 'That's too bad. Think about it though, no one lives forever. And what if we did, what would we do with ourselves, eh?' He turned away again.

Now Deckard tried to move, started to get to his feet, but as he did so he looked over the edge of the building and he felt the usual vertigo at the sight of the sheer drop. He slumped back. A heli-craft ambulance turned a circle to come in to land on the roof. It hovered waiting for the SFPD heli-car carrying Gaff to take-off and allow it room to land.

Deckard looked at the row's of emergency lights rotating as one craft took off and the other came in, he noticed his eyesight slipping into and out of focus as he watched. He shifted his weight and felt a sharp spasm of pain jolt along his shattered arm. He leaned back against the comm's dish frame.

'It's all over,' he said to himself. 'It's over.'

He felt his consciousness slipping away, then his eyes jolted open.

'Isn't it?'

He sighed and passed out.

The game had ended.

XVIII

Deckard was released from the hospital at eleven o'clock later that morning and made his way home. He looked better than he had when the ambulance had picked him up. He had been washed and bandaged, his arm was strapped-up, and he was dressed in a change of clothes, a temporary paper suit with a chequer-board pattern, but he moved wearily. Natural tiredness and an overload of nervous tension caused it. And another dose of Axtradel made him move with weary deliberation.

Gaff's words had recurred to him over and over as he had been treated in the hospital. "She can't live. That's too bad." What was his meaning? His intention? To say that he knew her inception routine date? To say that another blade runner would be assigned to retire her? That a blade runner had already been assigned? That, no matter where they went, there would be a blade runner gunning for her? Perhaps, it was to allow him a head start? Or, was he saying they would be left alone? For her to live out whatever time she had remaining.

He crossed the walkway bridge connecting the service and elevator tower to his apartment, cautiously, and entered his quarters with his gun drawn in his other, non-gun hand. He moved on into the living room and saw Rachel sprawled out in his large E-Zee chair, lying under a thick blanket. He looked down at her and removed the blanket, hoping he wouldn't see a bloody hole left by a blade runner - at least she hadn't been shot. He moved around his apartment - just in case - looking for the possibility that there was a blade runner there. Having checked the entirety of his small apartment he turned back towards her. Her long elegant legs lay over the arms of the huge easy chair. He approached her with his own gun still drawn and with the realisation that he treated Rachel as though she were a mating scorpion; he was undoubtedly attracted to her, while he was also assuming that she possessed a deadly sting in the tail.

But was she still alive, or Life Expired? Or soon to be. He noticed that her eyelids danced around, as though she were experiencing dream sleep. Could that be possible? Another innovation. But could Replicants _really_ dream? And what would they dream of? Do Reps count electric sheep? Perhaps! He put his gun in his lap and pushed his fingers into her neck to check for a pulse. The pulse was there, and it was strong - for now. Rachel stirred and woke at his touch. She moved her hand up to where Deckard pressed his hand into her neck and took hold of it. She held it tightly. And he tightened his grip on her hand in turn.

'Are you ever going to put that gun away?' she asked. Deckard straightened up and tucked the gun into the holster on his belt.

She continued to lie across the easy chair. They looked into each others eyes, silently, for a long time. Deckard watched the subtle movements of her eyes and the eye-lids. He sensed the movement of the muscles around the eyes and the nuance of expression. He had never seen a simulation of the human face anything like this. As complete as this. A simulation that was, apparently, indistinguishable from the original template; a human. Entirely artificial, but - yes - entirely human too. That was the crucial detail, Rachel was NOT a Replicant. How could she be? She was cearly beyond all the limitations of all the generations of Reps that had ever been. She WAS human, only she was one that was born fully formed, like Botticelli's Aphrodite being blown toward shore fully formed, and was an artificially created one, that was all the difference there was any more.

No more blade running, thought Deckard, and sensed the weight of it lift from his consciousness. And felt relief at that realisation. Tyrell had saved the best until last. Did he know it would be his last? Deckard supposed that Eldon Tyrell had achieved what he had worked for with every successive generation. He had achieved a Replicant that could pass the Augmented Turing Test. But why had The Corporation kept such an astonishing achievement so quiet? And would others believe the evidence of their eyes, their senses and their reason.

'Tyrell's dead', he said simply.

'Eldon?' she asked.

'Yes.'

She gave no reaction.

'Your pals got him,' he continued. 'We couldn't save him. I don't know why. It's murky. He was left without any protection from us; yet he didn't bring in any of his own.' Deckard couldn't help but wonder why Tyrell hadn't done this, when there were always hired guns, freelancers, like he used to be, available who offer this essential service. 'Whatever has been going on it's all far above my pay grade.'

Her eyes remained downcast.

'Given what blade runners do for a living, would I be foolish to ask you to put your trust in me?' he asked her.

She shook her head, seemingly unaffectedly - as far as a Replicant can ever be. 'I do,' she said simply. 'I have to. I have no one else. If I am to be betrayed, it may as well be by you. We've loved each other for so long...'

The new implant seemed to be working fine; the implant drawn from one of the other scenario sheets he had been presented with by Tyrell in response to the departmental subpoena.

He bent over her and they kissed. Again he sensed not just the warmth of her lips, but also the movement of the muscles underneath. Of a kiss not only received, but given too, of one that is returned. There was none of the unresponsiveness of the previous generations, when you would sense warm flesh and lips; of touching, but not kissing. (Mind you, he'd experienced that unresponsiveness with a few real women - and he had tests run on them, for confirmation.)

EPILOGUE

They would make their way to one of the 'free-states', preferably across the border into Canada, to British Columbia.

Deckard scouted the route out of his apartment. He moved over the walkway to the elevator and pressed the button to summon the cabin. He heard the machinery and the winch-mechanism turning distantly. While he waited for it to arrive at his floor he went back to the apartment and accompanied Rachel to the door by the walkway. When the elevator arrived he made certain it was empty. Then indicated to Rachel to quickly move over the walkway. She crouched down, below the line of the parapet and hurried the few steps into the elevator car. She stepped into a corner of the cabin and raised herself up. He told her that he had brought the car around so that it was parked by the elevator in the basement car park.

The meaning of Gaff's ambiguous words were made clear to Deckard. The one time they were stopped, at the California state border, they were waved through, on a cursory glance at their documentation. Otherwise, they were not harassed anywhere along the way. They got to Idaho and from there they flew on to the independent state that had once been called British Columbia, a newly independent state from Canada, which had named itself Columbia-TransPacifica but everyone still called British Columbia anyway.

If this is what can be achieved by science and technology, a complete incarnation of a human, in body and mind, what does it matter, he thought, if everyone is a Replicant, in the future. Well, preferably, a replica rather than a Replicant. Because, surely, one of these days, they would be made legal again, so there would be no such thing as a Replicant any more. And what would happen when The Tyrell Corporation, without Eldon Tyrell, were allowed to recommence production?

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Enquiries should be addressed to;

#CSJD_information/freedomcorporation-versus-californiastate.]

Our battered and wreaked world had lost two of the best genetic designers the industry had ever seen; Tyrell had been one of the best known, while JF had been one of the least known. It was their industry, vision, and ambition that had made these remarkable simulations of human life.

Would the world become filled with versions of the likes of Rachel and Roy? All with different names, all with physical variations, but where the beauty of Rachel would become commonplace; and they would all, essentially, be _his_ Rachel? When his Rachel was Life Expired, would he be able to get off-Earth, and have his own Replicant, or replica, issued to him on arrival; and would it be just like, what he had already come to think of as, _his_ Rachel? And how would he react? Most people, in these matters, imagine that the person they pair off with is unusual, or probably, utterly unique, though that can't be so. Would a copy of Rachel, exactly like _his_ Rachel _be_ the same, _be_ Rachel at all? Deckard didn't want to think about it. He would confront that conundrum when he got there.

He knew her Inception Routine Date. She was a half-generation revision. She had a couple of years remaining, but, one day remarkably soon, she would dip into a rapid decline. More reason to savour what they had remaining; her skin would suddenly and rapidly age, she would start to slur her words and feel numb around her head, around her hands and feet. Very soon after, she would fix her eyes on him, just as Pris had fixed her eyes on him, and Roy had fixed his eyes on him in the early dawn, and her Life would quietly Expire.

There weren't many ways that people could die within forty-eight hours in the modern world. Meningitis was one that remained, but there weren't many others. Which made this kind of death, the life expiry of a NeXus late series model, so much more shocking. Sudden death usually came by way of shootings and road-kill. And the occasional war.

Life is lived on credit, it is a loan taken out against Eternity. Available at an unbeatable, unrepeatable price. One that can never be matched or repeated.


End file.
